John steinbeck childhood

John Steinbeck

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(1902 – 1968)

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Biography current as of induction in 2007

John Steinbeck’s writing, deeply rooted in the Salinas Valley of his youth, earned him worldwide recognition. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 for “his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception.”

Born in Salinas, California, Steinbeck was the only boy among four children. His mother, a former schoolteacher, nourished his love of reading and the written word. During summers he worked on nearby ranches, and there developed an appreciation for the California countryside and its hardworking people.

Steinbeck attended Stanford, but in 1925 he left the university to launch a writing career. Cup of Gold, his first novel, was published in 1929. His next three novels, all set in California, earned him increasing acclaim, but it was not until The Grapes of Wrath (1939) that he became nationally known. Based on articles he had written about Dust Bowl refugees and edited by

Biography

Brief Biography

Born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902, John Steinbeck remains the quintessential California writer. Beginning in the 1930s, he forged a significant place in the culture and letters of the United States as a writer deeply engaged with place, with marginalized workers and ordinary people, and with the political and social human dramas that confronted him. More than any other writer of the United States in the 1900s, he remained engaged in the struggles of his country. He wrote social histories in the 1930s; deeply ecological works in the 1940s; early accounts of the Cold War when covering the Soviet Union in 1947; cultural studies of Mexico and Mexicans from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s; and in the 1960s increasingly concerned essays about the people of the United States, including accounts of the U.S. war in Vietnam. John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize, wrote as the conscience of his country for nearly 40 years. He died 20 December 1968 in his New York City apartment.

 

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John Steinbeck

American writer (1902–1968)

"Steinbeck" redirects here. For other people with this surname, see Steinbeck (surname).

John Ernst Steinbeck (STYNE-bek; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception".[2] He has been called "a giant of American letters."[3][4]

During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multigeneration epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939)[5] is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon.[6] By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold

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